In nature, structure and functionality effortlessly emerge from far-from-equilibrium, dissipative dynamics, often drivenby nonlinear feedback mechanisms. While this is ubiquitous all around us, its intentional use in human technologyremains relatively rare. I assert that it is possible to exploit these principles to achieve superior technologicalfunctionalities and that photonics is a particularly fertile platform to demonstrate this approach, which I refer to asNonlinearity Engineering. This talk will review successful applications of this approach to solve well-known andstubborn problems in a number of quite different physical systems. These range from overcoming limitations to modelocked lasers to creation of the first 3D photonic devices deep inside silicon and 2D nanoscale patterns ofunprecedented uniformity on surfaces of various materials, as well as self-assembly of Si quantum dots into a randomnetwork of pre-designed topology, among several others.